Restoration's fixing to serve food

Restoration Hardware wants its new store in Bostons Back Bay to feature a company first: a restaurant furnished with its own products.

But the luxury home design chains plans, which call for an addition to the historic Museum of Natural History building at 234 Berkeley St., are meeting some resistance.

Restoration Hardware announced in September that it had leased the 1863 French Academic-style building most recently home for upscale clothier LouisBoston and would restore its original glory.

The restaurant, with its two gas fireplaces and chimneys, is proposed for the Boylston Street side of the building, in a basement-level addition designed in the style of 19th-century conservatory annexes, according to plans presented to the Back Bay Architectural Commission. The addition could be removed at a later date without compromising the building, according to the commission.

The operator would be Restoration Hardware, said Joseph P. Nevin Jr., principal at Bergmeyer Associates Inc. in Boston. This would be their first restaurant.

The commission has approved the restaurant in concept and the shape of the addition an arched entryway into a restaurant that sits at the sill line of the buildings windows. But it wants the company to look at alternate materials, preferably more glazed glass, for the structure thats now envisioned as a mix of glazed glass and black aluminum.

But the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bays Architecture Committee would prefer no addition at all.

(We) would prefer outdoor seating to the restaurant rather than having a structure in front of the building because its a significant historic building, said Susan Prindle, committee co-chairman.

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Restoration's fixing to serve food